A stopgap solution BP is planning—covering the well with containers and pumping the oil out—will take weeks to roll out and is untested at the one-mile depth of this well, however. BP said it would begin working this weekend on a permanent solution to the crisis, drilling a new hole to cut off the damaged well, but industry scientists said that could take months.

The Deepwater Horizon, operated for BP by Transocean Ltd., burned and sank last week, leaving 11 dead and an open well on the ocean floor.

With a quick solution to shut off the spill looking out of reach Friday, the government and the oil industry struggled to contain the resulting slick and keep it from shore. The American Petroleum Institute alerted members that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wanted advice from the industry on how to manage the spill by the end of Friday.

On Friday evening, the National Guard was mobilized to assist in the cleanup, and the Pentagon said BP would have to bear the cost. Earlier Friday, a small drilling rig tipped over in inland waters near Morgan City, La., the Coast Guard said, though no oil was spilled.

The Deep Horizon slick began threatening the wetlands of the Louisiana coast, raising fears of environmental disaster in some of America's richest shrimp, oyster and fish breeding grounds.

Strong winds and choppy seas hampered efforts to hem in the oil. Several vinyl containment barriers, known as booms, broke up in the rough weather. Others remained on shore, as high waves—expected to continue through the weekend—made it impossible to lay them in the Gulf.

An equally pressing emergency loomed more than 40 miles offshore, where the deepwater well kept spewing oil uncontrollably.

Industry scientists say the permanent solution is to close the entire well. To do that, they must drill another hole—through 13,000 feet of rock a mile under the ocean's floor—that will intercept the leaking well. They can then pump in cement to try to plug the leaks.

From the Air

Timeline

This operation will take up to three months and is highly complex; the drills must precisely hit the leaking well—which is just seven inches wide. When a well off the coast of Australia blew out last year, it took five attempts over 10 weeks to hit the old well and shut it down.

Within hours of the explosion, BP was sending unmanned submarines to the well to try to trigger a device called a "blowout preventer," which is essentially a powerful valve meant to clamp down on the well and shut it off in case of emergency.

The device should have been triggered in the explosion, but wasn't; that failure will be a central question in the investigation.

In theory, the blowout preventer can also be activated by underwater robots. BP has six robots working on it, and says it will keep trying, but so far the valve has not worked. "It's just not functioning appropriately," Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, said in an interview this week.

For now, BP is trying a series of stopgap measures. The company is constructing three steel boxes—each 40 feet tall and weighing 73 tons—that it will place on top of the gushing oil. Pipes running through the boxes will carry the oil to a ship.

ENLARGE

Local boat captains hear safety instructions in a high school gym.
Getty Images

A similar system was used after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to capture oil from smaller spills in shallow water. But the technique has never been tried in deep water, which involves much higher pressures and near-freezing water temperatures. Engineers are still figuring out how to connect the steel boxes to the ship. BP has said the project will take two to four weeks.

The company is also hiring shrimpers—who stand to lose the critical spring catch to the oil slick—to clean up the oil as it drifts toward the coast.

Nearly 1,000 fishermen, many wearing white rubber boots, packed a school gym Friday for an initial training session. They must take a formal course to get certified in oil clean-up techniques, such as laying down containment booms. Many said they had no choice.

"The oil is going to poison everything," said James Trabeau, a 62-year-old commercial fisherman. "I want to do all I can do. I'm going to be in a serious bind if I can't fish."

Gazing out at the coastline—a crinkled patchwork of marshes and inlets—charter-boat owner Sal Gagliano expressed dismay that more hadn't been done to protect fisheries from the encroaching spill. "This is where [the oil] was forecast to land, and I don't see boom No. 1," Mr. Gagliano said. "We're going to be devastated."

Industry experts examining satellite data said they believe oil may be leaking at a rate of 25,000 barrels a day—five times the recent U.S. Coast Guard estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

If that's the case, more than 9 million gallons of oil may already be sloshing through the Gulf of Mexico, said Ian MacDonald, professor of oceanography at Florida State University, who specializes in tracking ocean oil seepage. The Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska in 1989 spilled 11 million gallons.

Federal officials are sticking with their estimate of 5,000 barrels a day but say they may revise it after further monitoring.

John Curry, spokesman for BP, said the 5,000-barrel-a-day figure was just a "guesstimate" as "it's very difficult to accurately gauge how much there is."

In addition to fisheries, the coastal habitat provides prime breeding ground for many bird species. Thousands of brown pelicans are nesting there right now, said Tom MacKenzie, a spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Some local officials have complained of a slow federal response. Eager to dispel those concerns, the administration sent several high-level delegations to the region. President Barack Obama said he had dispatched inspectors to the Gulf of Mexico to examine all deepwater oil rigs and platforms for possible violations. He asked the Interior Department for a report, to be delivered within 30 days, on measures that could be taken to prevent a similar accident.

Government officials said that proposals for future expansion of drilling off the coast would be on hold until investigations of this spill are completed.

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